Refuel, Rebuild, Recover

We all know that eating right and having the correct nutrition plan is key when it comes to recovering from a tough workout. After you've finished putting the wood to yourself, you'll want to refuel your body with nutrients. But what really helps your body recover while keeping in line with your health and workout goals? Well we at HIT FIT Nutrition put together the following tips to help learn more about keeping your machine running in top form.

Recovery Nutrition and Breaking Through Your Fitness & Performance Plateau (courtesy of the fine folks at HIT Fit Nutrition) 😁

Recovery is arguably the most overlooked aspect of a training program, and yet it is often the key to building functional strength and breaking through performance plateaus. The quality of an athlete’s recovery or speed at which muscles recover from intense training can have a direct impact on an athlete’s (yes you weekend warriors and you bad ass do it all moms are considered athletes as well!) ability to perform at subsequent efforts. Similarly, inadequate recovery can have long term negative impacts, linked to overtraining, that may result in a decline in performance and potentially injury. So what are the primary factors affecting the quality of recovery? Although a good recovery practice is multi-faceted, nutrition plays a key role and should be a priority for all athletes.

What is meant by recovery? For the purpose of this article we are defining recovery as the period of rest between successive training sessions. For most of us that do one-a-day workouts, this period is 24 hours. During those 24 hours, both the quality and quantity of nutrition can facilitate recovery and adaptation to training. For those training twice a day, this recovery period becomes significantly shorter and the importance of not just nutrition quality, but the timing of nutrition becomes paramount. In the following paragraphs we will talk about how fine tuning your recovery nutrition, through the use of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) and protein, can help you recover more efficiently and ultimately help you perform better.

Amino Acids are the building blocks of the body. Especially Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs). BCAAs refer to 3 (leucine, isoleucine and valine) of the 9 essential amino acids.

BCAAs play an important role in many aspects of our life. They promote muscle protein synthesis which can increase muscle growth over time. This increase in muscle growth will lead to an increase in your metabolism making it easier to maintain your weight. They have also been shown to prevent the onset of fatigue. This is due to their role in metabolizing glucose which is the muscle’s main fuel during exercise. By being able to more efficiently metabolize glucose during exercise the muscle is more efficient and go longer before fatigue. BCAAs also play a role in immune system and brain health.

Let’s break it down to be a little more understandable. By having elevated levels of BCAAs in your system your body will be able to use the protein in your system to help build muscle which in turn burns extra calories. For each pound of muscle you gain you burn an extra 50 calories a day doing nothing. Seems pretty insignificant right? Take those 50 extra calories and add them up over a year and that equals over 18,000 calories burned or 5 pounds! You may not think that is significant but that is just what that one extra pound of muscle burns. It does not take into account your current exercise routine or eating habits.

Another great benefit of increasing the body’s ability to use the protein in your system especially when losing weight is it will help preserve muscle. We all hear that when we lose weight we are also losing muscle. However, by being able to better use the protein in the system the body can preserve muscle during weight loss.

As far as delaying fatigue BCAAs allow the glucose in the muscle to be broken down into ATP (muscles uses this for fuel) faster. It also aids in converting fatty acids to glucose again resulting in more fuel for the muscle! More fuel for the muscle equals the longer we can be active before fatigue sets in.

Now that we know how important BCAAs are in weight management and overall general wellness let’s find some AdvoCare products that contain BCAAs. My favorite BCAA product from AdvoCare is BIOCHARGE. Another favorite is CATALYST.

To find how to best use these BCAA products please get with your coach